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Looking to purchase instrumental or orchestral parts to individual songs from many different musicals in order to perform them in a concert. All I can find is piano parts written for piano/vocal performances.

HHart
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  • Full orchestrations are readily available - at ~£60 per song. But what instruments are you going to use. – Tim Oct 09 '22 at 07:22
  • It depends on the song. We will perform 28 songs from about 15 different musicals. I wanted to have a small orchestra play along for the songs, maybe 5-9 people (violin, cello, bass, percussion, woodwind, maybe a brass instrument, like trumpet, and probably guitar). – HHart Oct 09 '22 at 21:49
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    Will you be performing these songs in public? If so there are [other considerations](https://support.easysong.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047682433-What-Is-a-Public-Performance-License-) and costs besides just purchasing the parts. – shoover Oct 09 '22 at 23:07
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    I'm not here to discuss all of that. We have already taken care of rights and licenses to perform. I'm asking for how to find the orchestral songs of individual songs within a musical. – HHart Oct 09 '22 at 23:23
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    Why was this closed exactly? This does not seem to fall into "transcribing or finding a *particular* song" but is easy more general than that. – Tom Oct 11 '22 at 17:28
  • @Tom Agreed. Closing at a business question, maybe, but I don't think this is included in the spirit of the "transcribing / finding" reason, especially since it isn't for a specific song. – Aaron Oct 11 '22 at 20:25

6 Answers6

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They either must be rented from the agency responsible for maintaining them, or custom arrangements must be created.

Aaron
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  • I have not been able to find any information on renting a single song from a musical. We are not performing a full musical; just individual songs from many different musicals. – HHart Oct 09 '22 at 23:25
  • @HHart You would have to speak directly to the agency that controls the score for each musical and ask. If they don't have a mechanism for performing an individual song, then you would have to go the route of arranging your own version. – Aaron Oct 10 '22 at 00:04
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Unless the music theatre show is VERY old it falls under copyright protection. This means that most likely a publisher or another entity holds the publishing and performance rights. You’d need to get into contact with this entity. But quite often such entities do not in fact sell the performance material, but only rent it out for performances. Of course this is not necessarily bad, as it is considerably cheaper to rent the material than it would be to buy it.

Lazy
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    This is one of the primary advantages of the Gilbert and Sullivan musicals. – user1937198 Oct 09 '22 at 19:39
  • We have already applied for and secured all rights and licenses to perform each song. I am now searching for orchestral parts for these songs, which are not published by the same organizations or names who hold the copyrights. – HHart Oct 09 '22 at 23:26
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I feel like most of the parts I've read from in professional orchestras have been stamped with "Luck's Music Library," a vast and long-standing clearinghouse for renting and purchasing orchestral parts. For instance, you can rent Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" for $90 or a medley of selections from Annie for $130. Note, you have no guarantee of finding the individual song free-standing—the Annie medley was all I could find when I went looking for "Tomorrow"—but the more popular the song the better the chance.

Andy Bonner
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Can you name the piece? If so, there are three solutions:

  • Arrangement: someone already did an arrangement, might as well search for *.mid files, where you can extract the score, although it might have sub-par quality.
  • There are sheet music vendors with a procurement service.
  • You can as well search specifically for the score. Try google searches with parameter "filetype:pdf", for example "score [name of song/musical] filetype:pdf"
musician23
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Orchs are readily available for downloading/printing. As an example, I've just googled Blue Bossa orchs and lots of youtube performances come up, some with a link to a publishers - $45. There are als dedicated sheet music sites which will sell orchs, in whatever key you specify, for whatever instruments you desire. Rarely for free...

Tim
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You can find a lot of sheet music for orchestras and bands on jwpeper.com along with audio samples. They have a lot of arrangements and original sheet music from many genres and artists.

Meredith
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